One of the ways to prove your readiness for a promotion or why you should be hired before a sea of other candidates is to create hypothetical case histories of different business problems and discuss the problems, business ramifications, and proposed solutions in great detail. We are talking pages, not two lines on your resume. Put your remedies on the table with a deep, strategic discussion of why they offer the best ROI (return on investment) for the business situation and be willing to be graded/critiqued for your proposed fixes before or early in the interview process. It will help you get into higher level interviews sooner and more often.

It is giving away free consulting, perhaps, but in a risk-adverse job market, it may move you past other contestants. It is actually safer in this instance not to offer remedies to the potential employer’s current problems, because it is likely you will not know some choice business tidbit that suddenly makes your proposed remedy look foolish. If you write about enough different business situations credibly, you will suggest that you could make future headway on the problems of the employer you are hoping to impress even if you don’t currently have all the information to score an A+ today for the target project. It is an effective way to show you are viable for a new industry.

If you were thinking of whining about all the work I am suggesting, one of my coaching clients, who had been at $150K before being laid off, moved to a $235K salary in his next move by creating a “portfolio” showcasing his business insights. He intends to repeat the strategy in the near future to accelerate his next promotion. (He also pointed out the exercise cost less than his MBA and accomplished more.)

Another approach is to write an erudite white paper or two on bleeding edge industry issues. Write an article that gets into the WSJ or Financial Times or the leading trade magazine in your industry. You can’t plagiarize or try to “snow” anyone with these. You need to be ready to discuss any of the topics for 2-3 hours convincingly in an interview.

This process is a good exercise to test how credible you are as a candidate for a more senior role than you have had previously without long term risk to any party. Both you and the hiring manager may need to see the concrete proof of how you rank versus other candidates.

It is also good way to remove the personal stigma of having been at a failing company in a senior title. I just recommended the process to someone who has been at several small start-ups that did not make it long term.

The flip side of this strategy is that, for something like 10 years now, companies have been pulling in 10-15 candidates and giving them 40-70 hour assignments of what would they do in X situation without paying consulting fees. Then the company takes the consensus of all the hopeful applicants and doesn’t hire any of them. I first saw this phenomenon amongst high level IT Project Managers with PMPs. I happen to think this is unethical and would never work for a company that asked it. One way to defend yourself against it is to offer solutions to problems at other companies as suggested in the second paragraph, before or regardless if the company asks for “free advice” with bad intentions.

It is all about demonstrating your thought leadership in a way that allows you to hop, skip, and jump past other potential candidates.  It also allows you to grow as fast as you can rather than waiting for company projects that allow you to flex your muscles.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, innovation, interviews, leadership, management skills, salary, selling skills, solving problems, technical skills, visibility | 1 Comment »

In my last blog, I pointed out that even if you work for someone else, you are CEO of your own destiny. You need to take 100% responsibility for the success of your own future. Alex Neff expanded on my concept using Sales and Sales Operations examples. Below are his thoughts:

I meet people frequently who don’t know how to advance their own career. Here are the kinds of things they say:

1 – I don’t know why I was part of the group that was laid off.

2 – I don’t know how to move past “meets expectations” in my annual review.

3 – I don’t know how to get more than a 2.5% annual raise.

By comparison, the CEO of the average multi-person company expects (demands) 10-15% growth year over year. Why are you settling for less growth for your one-person company?

America rewards the entrepreneur, the innovator, the one who thinks “outside of the box.” Regardless if your passion is sales or operations, anyone can succeed by thinking as the CEO of You, Inc. and by putting you, as the customer, first. By doing both, you will help your career grow.

Examples:

If you are in B2B sales, many of you have provided a customer-centric sales story via your employer’s company that 100 of your customers used to build the business of 100 of their customers. Consider the pitch you created was worthy of being retold 10,000 times.

Check out Nike’s Fuel Band. It counts your calories, your number of steps, your time. It makes staying in shape a game that you play against yourself. It provides a message that people embrace and repeat. It adds personal value. Social Media was used to help Nike’s product go viral at relatively little cost. Can you use Social Media to do the same for yourself via You, Inc.?

If you are in operations, as CEO of You, Inc., are you creating repeatable and scalable processes to ensure the future of you the customer? Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, sweated the details to ensure that the French fries one eats at McDonald’s are the same each time and at each location. The repeatable and scalable processes provide predictable consistency, and comfort for the customer. People know what to expect regardless of whether they are in the big city or the heartland. They want to experience a Zen moment, no surprises. Strive to achieve the same predictable results and peace of mind for the customer of You, Inc..

When you are working with your employer’s clients, it is important to solve their problems and needs and to provide on-going process improvement and value-add. The CEO of You, Inc. must similarly come in each morning and say “I’ve been thinking of our challenges, and I believe I may have a couple of new solutions that we should try.” Never stop seeking innovation and test-marketing alternatives of achieving better results.

As CEO of You, Inc., you need to continually challenge your company to increase value to the customer, grow, adapt, and be forward thinking. Failure to do so will cost you money and, more importantly, time. The company You, Inc. will be looking for your next client versus having prospective external clients reach out to you as a solution provider. Thinking as a CEO is something that is learned. A great career coach will help you learn it faster.

By the way, regardless of your age, planning done now should set the stage for your later success as CEO of Your Retirement, Inc.. Another reason to take command of your strategic direction as soon as possible.

Note: I don’t know if the concepts of “You, Inc.” and “CEO of You” are copyrightable. I have found several previous variations on the phrases on the Internet and in book titles. My apologies if this use of them offends anyone. Pat O’Donnell.

Topics: branding + positioning, getting ahead, leadership, selling skills, visibility | No Comments »

Just because you work for someone else, doesn’t mean you should not consider yourself 100% responsible for your own business success.

I am always surprised how many people, when asked why they were laid off, say “I don’t know why I was in the 10% laid off.” The same people frequently say things like  “I make my revenue quotas every year” without really knowing how they are viewed versus others at their current employer with the same quota track record or title. It is also typical of those who rely too heavily on relationship-building strategies.

You need to know how to make opportunities for yourself in any situation, independent of, or in spite of, the organization agenda.

Because employers will experience more and more pressure from globalization and innovation in the future, employers will have less and less ability to care for an individual’s destiny. It will be increasingly critical for you to know, defend, and augment your value to the current organization and the larger industry. It is just as important to a happy, currently working employee as to someone unemployed.

So how do you gain traction over your own image?

The key strategy is to gain awareness of your impact on the organization and customers as others measure it. You need to solicit constant feedback from your internal and external customers: What can I do to serve you better? Where do I (and we, the company) impact your business most? What do you value? What would you like me to do less of? Who are the other stakeholders I should get to know better (and serve) better? How do I rank versus your other providers? What are your unmet needs?

You need to be sincere about these questions, and ask them in an “open-ended manner” so that you hear issues other than the ones you expected.

If you have grown up in an engineering-driven or sales-driven environment, you need to become more customer-centric. The customer doesn’t care much about your agenda as provider, and will care less and less in the future as they will have more and more providers and services to choose from. You need to be seen as the preferred provider. Are you?

Career coaching is as relevant to someone happily working as to someone in transition.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, management skills, networking, selling skills, visibility | No Comments »

Innovation may occur over the short term, but it can’t be forced, and is usually the result of very few independent people in the organization. To be sustainable where it did not previously exist, innovation requires considerable long term strategic planning in the products/services offered and cultural change across the organization – and the two need to be integrated.

Cultural change: The vision

The vision defines company culture and shared attitudes amongst employees. Most efforts to sustain innovation fail because various stakeholders withdraw support when their personal status quo is threatened. It is imperative that people within the organization (even a start-up) are willing to continually evolve in the way they deal with each other. Long-term innovation also requires dynamic attitudes towards suppliers, competitors, investors, and the media.

Strategic product change: The mission

The mission defines the strategies for the physical deliverables or products and services of a company. It is the “what we will sell” versus the “how and why we do things.” The mission is reflected in the brand and positioning, target audience, technological edge, quality standards, pricing, or geographical coverage.

Integration

Because decisions about the product/service strategies are made day-to-day, and are frequently focused on an existing customer base, they tend to be shorter-term focused, more pragmatic, and it is easy for the mission to become out of sync with the company vision. The vision itself becomes impractical.

For innovation to be sustained, the strategic product and cultural planning and execution need to be developed concurrently, not sequentially, and not limited to a once a year discussion at annual planning meetings. This requires a closer cooperation between product development and the company vision champions than most companies are used to, especially with the lean staffs resulting from the recent recession.

Topics: communications, innovation, leadership | 1 Comment »

As I sat in a kayak this weekend, I spent time thinking about how I have changed my own labor situation in the last few years. After 30+ years of working mostly for other people I have now been working for myself almost 3 years. Many of my clients have only worked in large corporations and they keep asking if I would go back inside if I get the chance? After all, I worked for global companies with at least 5,000 employees for at least 20 years. OK, I am 55+, so fewer companies would be willing to hire me, but don’t I find it desirable?

Security is a state of mind. I seriously believe I am better off controlling my own destiny than being subject to the whims and decisions of a larger company and other executives. Even though I might make more money right now working for someone else.

Labor is a state of mind. At least now, when I invest 70 hours a week, I know I will reap more of the rewards for my effort. It feels less like “work.” I CHOOSE what to do today and tomorrow. What I am building cannot be taken away from me as easily as it could at a larger corporation. Even a corporation of 3 people.

I worked in Manhattan for 20+ years. There used to be a very popular poster that there was Manhattan and then there was little else. You could see the edge of the earth just beyond the Hudson River. You had little or no work value if you were not working in NYC.

Well, I have outgrown that sentiment and finding my value in anyone or any company outside of myself. Working for myself doesn’t feel so much like work.

Topics: career strategy | No Comments »